Fall Anime Season 2017 – Review January 17, 2018

This final season of the year wasn’t particularly interesting, but it had some good ones none the less. If you want to see a full list of what animes I’ve watched, you can always check out My Anime List. Here is a list of animes that I watched from this season:

One of my surprising favorites of this season is Blend S. Our main heroine Maika Sakuranomiya has a bad habit of glaring at people, making her look mad and sadistic especially when she doesn’t mean to. After having trouble finding a part time job, she is scouted one day by an Italian man who is also the manager of Stile, a café where its waitresses are given unique traits. Maika is given a sadist trait because of her looks and has to adopt a dominant and cruel persona when servicing customers, particularly masochist ones.

This show to me is like a combination of the animes Working! and a bit of Kiniro Mosaic; Mostly for its customer service workplace environment and somewhat from Maika’s interest in foreigners and studying abroad. I love the humor and moments of fanservice, but I also enjoyed the shipping developments between some of the characters, especially Akizuki and Kaho. I can sort of relate to Maika as I have a natural angry look on my face, especially when I don’t mean to or am not paying attention to my surroundings. The season ended on a good note, but it did not feel like a true end. Maybe we’ll see more of this show in future, at least I hope so.

If you could already tell from the looks of it, yes it’s another one of those ecchi harem type animes. No it’s not great as it ends up becoming a constant double act of our protagonist being the straight man to the girls who throw out perverted lines all the time. If you want a better version of an anime like this, try Seitokai Yakuindomo.

The adventures of Umaru continues in this second season, where not much has changed. She still enjoys lazing around playing video games and eating junk food. However I felt that she shows more heart this time around, caring more for the ones around her even in her chibi mode. We also got more screen time for the other characters of the show, as well as being introduced to a couple new ones as well. Umaru redeemed herself in my eyes that she is truly a person who can balance family, friends, and her own personal desires.

Continuing off from the Love Live loss from the previous season, Aqours prepares for the next Love Live. They still had the looming problem of their school closing without enough applicants, so this was their last chance to attract new prospective students by trying to win Love Live! Despite their best efforts however, they could not reach the goal set by Mari’s father and thus closure was imminent. Winning Love Love for their school has always been their goal, but now that focus was shifted to use Love Live to immortalize their school’s name in history. With enough determination and teamwork, their efforts paid off and were victorious. They gave their old school a memorable send off and in the end, Aqours went their separate ways.

I thought that this second season worked much better than the first, primarily because Aqours distanced themselves from their inspiration, μ’s. Not once did I ever remember μ’s mentioned in this season, and I think it’s a good thing because it’s to show that Aqours is their own thing, not just a copy or shadow of something else. There was also a decent amount of character development, allowing almost each character an episode to tackle a personal issue with the group usually helping out. This season wrapped up Aqours story in the most ideal way, and while a bit too clean for my taste, closed up most of the plot holes that I can think of.

This was one of the best animes of the season, at least in my opinion and age group. Here’s a synopsis from MAL.net:

“For the first time since graduating high school, 30-year-old Moriko Morioka is unemployed—and she couldn’t be happier. Having quit her long-standing job of over 11 years, Moriko quickly turns to online games to pass her now-plentiful free time, reinventing herself as the handsome and dashing male hero “Hayashi” in the MMO Fruits de Mer. With the pesky societal obligations of the real world out of the way, she blissfully dives headfirst into the realm of the game, where she promptly meets the kind and adorable healer Lily. Befriending each other almost instantly, the two become inseparable just as Moriko herself becomes more and more engrossed in her new “life” as Hayashi. Eventually, Moriko adopts the reclusive lifestyle in its entirety, venturing out from the safety of her apartment only when absolutely necessary.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Moriko, a timid 28-year-old corporate worker named Yuuta Sakurai has also logged onto Fruits de Mer from the other side of town. Coincidentally bumping into each other at the convenience store one night, both write off their meeting as no more than just another awkward encounter with a stranger—however, fate has more in store for them than they think.”

Because I’m a 27 year old part time worker and avid anime/video game fan, I connected with this show quite easily. I know the feeling of working constantly, and having it wear you down. I also know the great feeling of unwinding by playing online games with friends. I may not play MMOs much specifically, but I get the gist of how Moriko feels in general with video games. As with any anime that doesn’t focus on a student, it’s a breath of fresh air. What’s also charming about this show is the development of our main characters Moriko and Yuuta, two individuals who meet by chance but grow closer to one another through a shared interest. The show had a healthy conclusion that we can assume leads to a bright future to the both of them.

This was an adorable anime short series to watch, that shows the absolute trust and love a married couple can show for each other. Here’s a self-explaining synopsis from MAL.net:

Chisato Mizusawa is a reserved but excellent and pretty assistant manager in her company. She has a secret that only her husband Sora knows, which is that she likes drinking alcohol, and she can become very cute when she is drunk! Even tonight, she gets relaxed (with the phrase “Shifuku~”) and drunk with the cocktail Sora makes♥. It’s a “Yoidere (Drunken Dere)” cocktail comedy of Japan’s closest husband and wife.

In this third season of Shokugeki no Soma, Yukihira faces new challenges in the form of taking on the elite 10 directly. Through trials and tribulations he grows his cooking skills to new levels, but not before a new enemy appears to change and destroy all that Soma believes in….

I enjoyed this season as it wasn’t just all about Shokugekis and all, but rather about the whole school and about how divided the ideals of cooking are between all the students. Because of that rift, and the fact that the majority of its source comes from the top tier students, Soma is forced to face his toughest battles yet, pushing him towards the top as well. Will this be enough to change things for the better? We’ll find out hopefully when the next season begins.

UQ Holder! is a sequel manga to the Mahou Sensei Negima! series both by Ken Akamatsu. Knowing this is important because I feel that you really need to be familiar with Negima! in order to understand all the references and general story. In this anime adaptation, it has been decades since the events from Negima! This story follows Tota Konoe, a young boy who grew up in the countryside. Two years prior, he was saved by Yukihime (Evangeline A.K. McDowell) after his parents was killed by an unknown person. Due to this he loses his memories before the incident, and Yukihime takes him under her care. Back in the present, Tota enjoys his everyday life with his friends until one day he is attacked and is left on the verge of death. Yukihime saves him once more, though this time by offering to live as an immortal vampire such as herself. He learns then that he is the grandson of Negi Springfield, and that the answers he seeks about his life lies with him at the space elevator tower in the city.

As a fan of the Negima! series, I’ve finished the manga and was quite interested in UQ Holder! when I discovered it on Crunchyroll’s manga page. With how rushed and incomplete the ending of Negima! was, I was hoping that this sequel would iron out the details about the Lifemaker and the fate of Negi and class 3-A. As of writing this, I’ve read up to chapter 127, but that was over a year ago since I last read a new chapter. When it was revealed that Tota was a clone of Negi in the anime, I wasn’t sure whether or not that was in the manga or just added for the anime. I’m also pretty sure though that the encounter and battle between Tota and Negi in the anime probably didn’t happen in the manga, as I knew that they needed to have some sort of climax and ending to the anime season…. At least not yet anyways. I felt that UQ Holder!’s manga didn’t have enough chapters for them to have a proper story to animate, so my expectations were not high for the anime. Though I guess having anything Negima! related animated is something good regardless, especially looking at the track record that the series has when made into an anime.

While the first couple of episodes adapted the manga well, I felt the rest of the season was too fragmented and rushed due to lack of content from the manga, and tied in an original ending to conclude the anime. I could be completely wrong as I haven’t kept up with the manga, but seeing how Akamatsu’s series-turned-anime tends to end up, I would not be surprised if this was the case. I do have hopes that UQ Holder! will eventually flesh out the Negima! universe, as well as becoming its own thing from the child professor, but only time will tell.